The present disclosure relates to a multilayer ceramic capacitor and a method of manufacturing the same.
Examples of electronic components using ceramic materials include a capacitor, an inductor, a piezoelectric element, a varistor, and a thermistor.
A multilayer ceramic capacitor, a multilayer chip electronic component, is a chip-type condenser that is mounted on a printed circuit board of various electronic products such as display devices including liquid crystal displays (LCDs) and plasma display panels (PDPs), computers, personal digital assistants (PDAs), cell phones, and the like, to allow electricity to be charged therein and discharged therefrom.
A multilayer ceramic capacitor (MLCC) is used in various types of electronic components since it is relatively small and can be easily mounted while implementing high capacitance. The multilayer ceramic capacitor may include a ceramic body in which a plurality of dielectric layers and internal electrodes are alternately laminated, and external electrodes. The external electrodes may be formed by applying a conductive paste on a surface of the ceramic body.
Recent advances in technologies of electronic products have led to an increasing demand for small, high-capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitors.
In order to implement high capacitance, the number of stacked internal electrodes needs to be increased, resulting in an increase in the size of the ceramic body.
In this case, an allowable range of external electrode thickness with respect to the entirety of a size of a multilayer ceramic capacitor including external electrodes installed in each product may be significantly reduced, and thus, it is necessary to reduce the thickness of the external electrodes.
However, external electrodes formed of copper-glass materials typically used in an existing ultra-thin, ultra-high capacitance multilayer ceramic capacitor may suffer from reliability problems due to the permeation of a plating solution when they are provided as thin films.
In order to address the reliability issue due to a reduction of density in the external electrodes when the thin films are applied, an attempt to increase the content of glass in the external electrodes has been made. However, an increase in the content of glass may cause low electrical conductivity with internal electrodes, non-plated portions due to poor plating, and soldering failures when the capacitor is mounted on a substrate.
Patent Document 1 discloses a multilayer ceramic capacitor including external electrodes having a double-layer structure, but fails to disclose a triple-layer structure in which two external electrode layers containing copper and glass are disposed in a region in contact with internal electrodes and a region to be plated, and one external electrode layer containing glass is disposed therebetween.